


Seventeen Hours

by eyra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Remus Lupin, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Berlin (City), Bottom Remus Lupin, Complicated Relationships, Dom Sirius Black, Dom/sub, Everyone is an idiot apart from Regulus, German Remus Lupin, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Master/Slave, Minor Character Death, Modern Era, Oral Sex, Painting, Pining, Romance, Sexual Dysfunction, Slash, Sub Remus Lupin, Top Drop, Top Sirius Black, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:33:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyra/pseuds/eyra
Summary: They had a year in Berlin, and then Orion ordered Sirius back to England to help set up a new department under the firm's South American division. Sirius had been thrilled when Remus turned up in London three weeks later, shrugging and telling him that he'd tired of Berlin, and something in the grey capital had sparked back to life when Sirius returned from reunion drinks at the pub with James and Peter to find Remus - key acquired from Sirius's secretary, he later uncovered - naked on the bed in Sirius's room, head cushioned on folded arms on the silk sheets, knees tucked under and waiting.Sirius and Remus have an arrangement, of sorts. But they’re definitely not together.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 41
Kudos: 236





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The third part of Freedom & Whisky is still in the pipeline but it’s a little while away yet, so have this instead. Basically I read Box Hill and it got me feeling some type of way so I wrote this. This is nothing like that though.
> 
> I don't know why I write so much top Sirius because I honestly don't see it that way in canon but... it happens, I don't know.
> 
> Anyway, this is rude. I hope I've done it tastefully, but it is unquestionably rude. Proceed with caution, and enjoy! x

It had taken Sirius less than a day to delete the app from his phone. Less than one day after meeting a boy with pale skin and a nose ring and eyes the colour of hazelnuts. He hadn't expected it to be so straightforward; he didn't know Berlin at all, didn't know her scenes and her rules and how easy it would be to simply put his needs out there into the ether and have them fulfilled so singularly and so immediately. A week at the new office, seven nights alone in his rented apartment and half a bottle of commiseratory gin had him wildly indulging in a fancy he's toyed with since before university and when he'd woken at noon and checked his phone, and seen the photographs on Remus's profile, he'd somehow managed to cast aside the heavy veil of shame that's always enshrouded that very hidden part of himself long enough to reply. And it had been so easy from then: they'd met, at a bar just off the Kurfürstendamm, and Remus had described in exquisite detail what he was looking for, and they'd come to an agreement. Sirius went away and deleted his profile, and that was that.

It worked beautifully. The four evenings a week that Sirius had Remus were never anything short of perfect; he simply couldn't have written it better. Whether he left the office for home at dusk or midnight, Remus would be there, as agreed; undressed and waiting. Sometimes on the bed. Sometimes knelt, at Sirius's instruction, on the parquet floor of the hallway between the umbrella stand and the glass console table with its framed photographs of Reg and James and Lily. The rescheduled plans and missed phone calls tipped the others off soon enough, but - as Sirius assumed they would - they simply understood that Sirius had started seeing someone and was taken up by dates and dinners and walks through the city parks. Which he decidedly wasn't. Remus dated, still; it had been a stipulation put forward a month or two after they met, around the time Remus also took kissing off the table, and Sirius hadn’t let himself think too much on it before he'd told Remus that providing he got regularly tested, he would allow it. And that, again, was that.

They had a year in Berlin, and then Orion ordered Sirius back to England to help set up a new department under the firm's South American division. Sirius had been thrilled when Remus turned up in London three weeks later, shrugging and telling Sirius that he could do his work from anywhere, and that he'd tired of Berlin, and something in the grey capital had sparked back to life when Sirius returned from reunion drinks at the pub with James and Peter to find Remus - key acquired from Sirius's secretary, he later uncovered - naked on the bed in Sirius's room, head cushioned on folded arms on the silk sheets, knees tucked under and waiting. 

The frequent trips to La Paz the firm demanded presented new challenges that turned out to be the most wonderful opportunities, and their standing four nights a week turned into standing video calls - midnight for Sirius, a few hours before sunrise for Remus - with Sirius sending through his requests beforehand and Remus following them to the letter, always. The winter came and went, and Sirius found himself away more than he was in London, and one night in the spring he called Remus and could tell - even with the distortion of the camera - that Remus had had sex that day, and he stopped asking to hear about Remus's dates soon after that. If Remus noticed, he never said anything.

The others found out about Remus that summer. It had been entirely by accident, Sirius and Remus both having agreed that lives were best kept separate, as they always had been; James and Lily never had worked out who Sirius was supposedly seeing in Berlin, and eventually they gave up trying, but then James and Regulus had turned up unannounced to Sirius's apartment - an hour early to pick him up for a drinks reception the firm was throwing to celebrate the completion of the South America project - and Remus had been alone in the bedroom and had pulled a sheet around himself to come out and see what the noise was. Sirius had arrived home a few minutes later to find an annoyed Remus, a stuttering, apologetic James, and Regulus nearly doing himself an injury trying to hold in his laughter, and they'd all ended up having a beer together in Sirius's sitting room, which had been about the most uncomfortable experience any one of them could recall. Sirius had refused to give up how the two of them had met, which only stoked James's curiosity further, and Remus had explained - a little coldly, Sirius had thought - that they weren't together, and that yes, he'd been the one Sirius had been spending all his time with in Berlin, but they _definitely_ weren't together, and they'd all left feeling embarrassed and awkward and, in Sirius's case, a little hurt by the way Remus had so easily dismissed the assumption that they were anything other than acquaintances.

James had taken him out to a bar three nights later and plied him with alcohol until he caved, to a point. The barely-spoken but implicitly understood agreement of discretion and detachment that he and Remus had shared for the past two years had taken something of a battering by Remus's behaviour that week, and Sirius hadn't put up much a fight as James teased the story out of him. He'd been shocked, of course: Sirius had so expertly hidden this part of himself beneath the restrained facade that James has known for two decades, and the news that Sirius had effectively been keeping an arrangement tantamount to consensual sexual serfdom since he moved to Berlin sent James spluttering into his cocktail, face scarlet.

"I don't understand what either of you get out of this," he'd said an hour later, watching Sirius across his drink like a scientist puzzling out some novel disease. He didn't get it; the distaste was obvious from the beginning, but Sirius tried not to mind.

"Sex," he'd shrugged, downing his martini, and James had shaken his head and asked why they weren't just in a relationship, and then they could get all the sex they needed, and have the rest, too. "Because it's not about the rest," Sirius had explained. "He gets the rest elsewhere."

James had put his head in his hands at that, drunk and silly and groaning something about Sirius being an idiot, and Sirius had smiled and ordered them another round from the bartender. Remus was waiting, of course, when he got home, and Sirius had made him kneel on the hardwood floor in front of the chaise longue in the bedroom and pleasure him with his tongue whilst he watched some boring film on late night television. He'd got through half a bottle of gin after Remus had left - because Remus never, never stayed the night, ostensibly because Sirius would never allow that - and didn't make it into the office the next morning.

It went on like that, and James didn't ask Sirius about Remus again, and Peter and Regulus didn't ask James about Sirius, and Sirius didn't ask Remus about the other men he was having sex with.

And it worked.

***

"Is it okay if I'm a bit late tomorrow?" asks Remus as he tugs his jeans on. No underwear, as ever. "I've got the showing in Old Street."

"Of course," Sirius nods lightly, busying himself with stripping the ruined sheets from the bed. Trying not to think about how this is Remus's third exhibition of his work this year and the third that he hasn't been invited to. "You don't have to come, you know."

Remus frowns at him. "No, I'll come," he shrugs, buttoning up his shirt. "I'll just be a bit late."

"Alright."

They're on three nights a week, at the moment. They'll go back up to four, they've said, when Remus's calendar quietens a little and Sirius has finished the project that he and Regulus started back in February, working long hours with the Nairobi office over conference calls and takeaways. They'd decided about a month ago that the increasingly late nights probably weren't going to be sustainable on their current schedules, and Thursday evening had been dropped so Remus could focus on setting up his next show and Sirius could either stay late at the office or come home and sit watching television alone, bored out of his mind. He's not entirely sure it's working for him, truth be told.

"Mr Black?"

Sirius looks up from the sheets at Remus's prompt, and finds himself being watched expectantly.

"Hmm?" he hums, raising his eyebrows. His hands are still tugging at the damp sheets, trying to free them from the mattress. _Mr Black._ That had been an early stipulation too: Remus had assumed and Sirius hadn’t known any better. He kind of hates it now. It’s only ever felt like an unnecessary pastiche; something silly and prescriptive they fell into because they felt like they should, because that’s what someone in Remus’s position should call someone in Sirius’s position. Sirius thinks it makes him sound as if he has decades on Remus. He doesn’t; they were both born in June, Remus only a year later than Sirius, so two months after they met in Berlin they turned twenty-eight and twenty-nine within a week of one another. Remus celebrated his by going to a bar in Friedrichshain with his friends and a boy from a coffee shop three doors down from Sirius’s building. Sirius celebrated his by fucking Remus on the rug in the sitting room of his flat and then downing a bottle of Malbec for good measure.

"I said where do you want me tomorrow?"

"Oh," Sirius says distractedly, bundling the bedding together and straightening up, looking across at Remus in the dim lamplight. "I'll probably be home already, so just... I'll text you."

"Fine," Remus nods, with a small smile. "See you tomorrow." And then he's heading out into the hall, and grabbing his jacket from where it hangs on the coat stand, and bending down to lace up his boots.

"Hope your show goes well," Sirius says quietly, leaning against the bedroom doorframe and watching him. "Is Marlene going with you?"

It's a cheap, weaselly thing. He knows Marlene isn't going with Remus, because he knows Marlene went to New York for her own show a week ago and won't be back yet. And Remus knows he knows that, which is probably why he frowns at him as he finishes putting on his shoes and stands up, one hand on the doorknob, ready to leave.

"No," he says. "She's still in New York."

"Oh, of course," Sirius nods, as if he didn't know that, and as if Remus doesn't see right through him. He only knows Marlene even exists because Remus mentioned her all of once, about a year ago, in an offhand way that Sirius thinks he remembers was relating to Remus getting a lift to his apartment one day, and there's no reason that Sirius should ask or care about her now. There's a silence that borders on uncomfortable, and then Remus clears his throat.

"It's just some guy I went out with the other week," he shrugs, as if it doesn't matter. Sirius thinks it does, even if he shouldn't. "He's into his art, so."

Sirius nods again. He doesn't know why. "Good," he says, smiling, and he doesn't know why he's doing that either.

"I'll still come straight here afterwards."

"Yeah, fine," Sirius says, and then Remus is leaving, and Sirius is padding through to the living room and watching out of the window to make sure Remus gets in his cab alright. In Berlin, where the windows didn't face the street, he used to walk down with him and wait with him on the pavement until his taxi arrived. But in London he just watches from the window, and Remus never looks up, but Sirius does it anyway. Just to make sure.

He falls asleep on the sofa in the early hours, because his bed isn't made and the spare rooms don't interest him, and everything aches the next morning when he wakes. He texts Remus around noon, and starts to tell him again that he hopes his show goes well, but then he deletes it and tells him instead that he's to take his clothes off in the hallway when he arrives and go get some lube and a toy and meet Sirius in the sitting room. Sirius isn't sure how much the idea interests him - his hangover makes it difficult to think about much beyond just going back to sleep - but it gets Remus's attention, which was sort of the point, and Sirius feels soothed somehow when Remus immediately sends back his understanding along with a photograph, which he's taken to doing, and which Sirius hasn't spoken to him about but is privately thrilled by. It's just a quick thing, taken in the bathroom off the studio Remus has been working out of, if the sterile lighting is anything to go by; just Remus, soft in the cradle of his thighs, the waistband of his jeans visible at the edge of the frame. Sirius doesn't reply, because he never does, but he does lock the door to his office and tug the blinds across the glass wall and silence his desk phone, and he pulls himself out of his suit trousers and touches himself to the photograph. Until his eyes fall shut, and he comes to a picture of Remus's pale face instead, all full lips and nose piercing and disapproval etched across his brow.

It's almost midnight when Sirius hears the door to the apartment open, and he takes his glasses off and pushes aside the stack of papers he's been poring over, setting them beside him on the sofa and rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He listens as Remus gets undressed outside, and then hears him go upstairs to Sirius's room. He appears in the doorway a minute later, and Sirius watches as he pads across the rug and kneels in the centre of the room, facing him. He's got a small smear of green paint at the end of his left eyebrow.

"Turn around," Sirius says, leaning back on the sofa and crossing one ankle over the other in front of him. "Hands and knees."

He waits until Remus is in position and then tells him to part his legs a little, and Remus does, because he always does, because that's what this is all about. Sirius wonders how his art show went.

"Get the lube," he says instead, watching a point somewhere on Remus's right thigh. "Get yourself nice and wet."

For a moment, he panics that he might sound bored. He isn’t, he doesn’t think, but he finds he can't concentrate on anything that's not getting Remus to turn back around so he can see that spot of green paint next to his eyebrow again. He would've told him it was there earlier, if he'd been at his show with him: he would've helped him wipe it off, tidying him up ahead of his big night, and he thinks he might be angry at Remus's nameless, faceless date for not doing the same. But then maybe it happened afterwards; maybe the two of them went back to Remus's studio after the show and maybe they fucked and maybe that's when Remus got the paint on him. And that doesn't make Sirius feel angry; it doesn't make him feel anything.

He tells himself that, anyway.

He huffs out a long breath, and settles himself more comfortably into the sofa as he watches Remus uncap the lube and reach back to smear an obscene amount over himself, fingers dipping easily between his cheeks and leaving everything wet and shining in their wake. He coats himself thoroughly, adding more and rubbing it over his entrance, along the tops of his thighs, into the skin behind his balls, and then he brings his hand round to run over those as well, and then his cock where it hangs soft between his legs. It's one of the many wonders of Remus's body: how bloody long it takes him to get hard. Sirius had worried something chronic back in Berlin, back when they first met, assuming it meant Remus was uncomfortable or not enjoying himself or Sirius was messing the whole thing up but Remus assured him - and it became wondrously clear, the more time they spent together - that it was pure physiology, and he'd always been that way, and he'd get hard eventually. Which he always did, but somewhere along the way Sirius found he very much enjoyed him soft, too. He studies him now, and feels himself stir in his suit trousers, and everything feels a bit more normal again.

"That's enough," Sirius tells him, and is relieved to find that at least he no longer sounds bored. Rather, there's a ragged edge to his voice that he welcomes gratefully, and he takes a moment to savour the way his breath is coming a little faster as Remus caps the bottle and tosses it aside, waiting on his hands and knees. "Use your fingers."

He takes himself out when Remus pushes a second finger inside a few minutes later, and matches him stroke for stroke. There's a muscle in Remus's neck that always gets taut when he's worked his way up to three fingers, and Sirius watches for it as he unbuttons his shirt lazily with his free hand. "Come here," he mutters after a while, and Remus pulls out and wipes his hand messily on his thigh as he turns and shuffles across the rug to kneel at Sirius's feet. He doesn't look at him, though; he never looks at him. Not whilst they're doing this. It had been an early provision in their agreement, and Sirius honestly can't recall which of them asked for it but it's been that way for years. Remus keeps his eyes averted during sex, no matter what Sirius is doing to him, and Sirius gets to look wherever he wants. Which, right now, is at that bloody smear of paint on Remus's face. He tuts, more to himself than anything, and quickly sucks his own thumb into his mouth before he reaches out to rub carefully at the skin at the end of Remus's eyebrow. The paint doesn't come away easily; it flakes and pulls, and Sirius leans in to rub at it more insistently, and thinks he imagines Remus is leaning into his touch, eyes still downcast.

"There," he murmurs, when the skin is finally clean, and it's not until he's settled back against the sofa that he registers how strange that probably was, and how he should probably try to pass it off as annoyance that Remus had dared come to him in such a state. Which it wasn't, and now he's worried that Remus knows that too, so he clears his throat and takes himself back in hand and nods to the toy on the floor. "Pick it up," he says, and Remus does, and then Sirius is coaching him as he kneels in front of the sofa and works the toy into himself. It's a simple thing; a modest length of heavy, clear glass, flared at its base, solid and weighty and a dream at holding onto Remus's body temperature once Sirius has pulled it out of him. It was one of the first toys Sirius bought for him, back in Berlin, and Remus seems to revert to it every now and then, with no discernible pattern, despite having a whole library to choose from.

Remus gasps when he pushes the last inch in roughly at Sirius's instruction, and Sirius glances down between them to see Remus's cock now full against his thigh. He reaches out to him, and wraps a hand firmly around the back of his neck, and pulls until Remus is leaning over him and opening his mouth for Sirius to thrust slowly up into it.

"Go on," Sirius whispers, and Remus takes him in completely and swallows around him and it's sublime, like it always is; Sirius sighs, and lets his head fall against the back of the sofa, one hand still resting in Remus's hair as he pulls back and works his tongue against the head of Sirius's erection. It's messy, and ungainly, and exactly how Sirius likes it. He closes his eyes at the lewd, wet sounds filling the room, and then feels Remus moan weakly around him a moment before there's a dull thud as the toy slips out and lands on the rug. How perfectly obscene, Sirius thinks. How wonderful.

"Put it back in," he says breathlessly, and watches as Remus pulls off and reaches for the toy, settling it back between his legs and pushing upwards firmly, his other hand curling into the sofa cushion a hair's breadth from Sirius's trouser leg. He's back on him then, and it's not long before Sirius is pulling Remus's head lower and finishing down his throat, and if his free hand reaches out and grasps wildly for Remus's where it rests on the seat next to him then neither of them mention it afterwards. They never do.

He tells Remus to take the toy out then, and instructs him to fetch a hand towel from the downstairs bathroom, which Remus lays out carefully on the rug and kneels beside, slowly working his own completion out onto it for Sirius to see. Sirius watches him from the sofa, his own soft length laying spent against his thigh, and then - as ever - Remus is cleaning up and getting dressed and fucking _leaving._ He's always _leaving_ , and if Sirius manages to keep the desperation from his voice as they make their arrangements for tomorrow night and say their perfunctory goodbyes then it's a fucking miracle, and it's not until the door slams shut out in the hallway that he notices he's not even buttoned his trousers up yet. He reaches for the vermouth that night, and sleeps through his alarm the next morning.

He’s at a bar near Liverpool Street in November when a man with jaw-length brown hair and a navy blue suit asks him if he can buy him a drink. He’s supposed to be meeting James, but James is late, so he says yes and spends thirty minutes flirting and thinking that the man isn’t half as pretty as Remus. He gets his number, though, and a week later finds himself in the bathroom of a flat in Greenwich, desperately trying to work up the courage to go back out and fuck the guy who’s waiting for him in the bedroom down the hall. He ends up having to make up some nonsense story about a friend needing to be picked up, and the guy only looks put out for a moment before he’s shrugging and telling Sirius to call him later. Sirius deletes his number before he’s even out of the building. He fires off a text to Remus instead, telling him that he needs him tonight, even though it's a Thursday, and two hours later finds himself buried deep inside him on white sheets, panting as he focuses on a spot of paint just behind Remus's right ear.

The only thing Sirius knows about Remus’s art is what colour he’s been painting with that day. There’s a lot of red: he must paint in red a lot. Sometimes grey, always black. He used to ask about it, sometimes. “ _What have you been painting in black today?”_ he’d say. Remus never really answered; it was always _“things”_ or _“the same as yesterday”_ and since they moved to London Sirius hasn’t asked. He still notices the colours, though, and thinks the red suits Remus the best.

"Touch yourself," he murmurs breathlessly, still staring at the point of crimson in Remus's hairline, and then they're both collapsing onto the mattress, damp and worn out and Sirius's hand laying empty and searching in the space on the sheets between them.

Remus goes to Cologne to visit his family for Christmas like he always does. Sirius goes to Grimmauld Place with Regulus, and excuses himself halfway through lunch on the twenty-fifth, Orion and Reg bickering over some detail of the Nairobi project as Walburga searches for something at the bottom of a bottle of port. He hovers in the bathroom, phone in hand, before firing off a quick _“Happy Christmas”_ text to Remus, which he usually permits himself. Christmas and birthdays, anyway, and he only has to wait a moment before an answering message lands in his inbox and he grins stupidly at the screen. He wonders how Remus’s trip is going, and if his mum is any better, and which of his friends from home he’s going to see between now and New Year. Not that Sirius knows any of those friends. He doesn’t know their names, or if they even exist. He asks for a photo instead, and goes back to lunch, and two come through at once when he sits back down at the table: Remus soft against his pyjama bottoms, waistband pulled just low enough to expose himself. And then Remus grinning at the camera wearing a bright red Santa hat. Sirius downs his wine in one gulp and sets the second picture as his background. Regulus narrows his eyes at him across the turkey.

"Are you still seeing that chap from Berlin?" he asks Sirius quietly when they're sitting round the fire in the parlour that night, the hearth roaring as Orion leaves for the office and Walburga expires on the settee across from them, empty glass dangling precariously from her numb fingers.

Sirius shakes his head, staring into the flames. "I'm not seeing anyone," he says, and sees flashes of claret and liquid white licking at the charcoal in the grate.

"What was his name, again?"

"I'm not seeing anyone, Reg," he sighs tiredly, then heaves himself off the sofa with a _"Goodnight"_ and a soft ruffle of Regulus's hair as he passes behind him.

They do end up together on New Year's Eve, simply because it's a Tuesday and Remus is there anyway and Sirius has never been one for ringing in midnight at parties or clubs. Remus undresses in the hallway and Sirius orders them Thai food from down the road, because it's late and neither of them have eaten yet, and they settle into the living room in front of Jools Holland to eat, Sirius with a tray on his lap and Remus nestled, as ever, on the rug at his feet.

Sirius almost asks him to move. He almost says it: _"Come sit up here,"_ he'd offer, and Remus would frown at him because that's not how any of this works. _"Come sit next to me,"_ Sirius would plead. He watches the back of Remus's head instead and stays silent, and is barely present for the next hour until he finds himself, somehow, with three fingers inside Remus as the clock strikes midnight, and he battles down a glum, aching heaviness at the prospect of twelve more months of feeling like this.

The new year starts just like the last, with too many meetings and Orion asking too much of all of them and Remus spending too much time with too many men who aren't Sirius. They do switch back to four nights a week, come February, and Sirius isn't sure if he feels worse or better for it. They don’t always have sex; they almost always do, but not always, and on the nights when they don’t Sirius increasingly gets the impression that he’s letting Remus down somehow now. Not that Remus has ever said as much, and historically has always seemed perfectly accepting to sit naked at Sirius’s feet whilst Sirius works or watches television or reads his book. It’s more that Remus tends to get twitchy as the night wears on now, and a little snappy when Sirius asks anything of him. He never used to be like that; in Berlin they’d spent many evenings like that and it had never seemed to be an issue. Remus had seemed to revel in the considered lack of attention afforded to him on those evenings and became happy and pliant the more Sirius asked of him; bringing him fresh drinks, another book, laying out on the rug in front of the sofa so Sirius might look at him and lazily trace the lines of his body with his foot, usually still in his Oxfords from a day at the office. He’d fit one between Remus’s parted legs and hold a gentle pressure there and Remus had always seemed to love that, even when they didn’t have sex afterwards. But now he seems distracted somehow, as if he’s bored of the charade and would rather just get on with it and be fucked. It makes Sirius feel anxious and embarrassed and like he’s doing something horribly wrong, all at the same time.

Their evenings do get shorter, in an unwelcome parallel to the longer days that come as winter slips into spring and on into summer, and it's barely dark now by the time Remus is pulling his clothes back on and leaving Sirius, curtailed scenes cut even briefer by Sirius working late at the office and Remus disappearing before his completion has even cooled on Sirius's hands. It worries Sirius, for lots of reasons; he’d always made quite the production out of aftercare, back in Berlin, and now that they seem to be skipping any notion of it altogether he feels horribly lacking, and discourteous, and terrified that he's failing to fulfil some admittedly unspoken agreement and causing harm to Remus in doing so. Remus had never asked, but Sirius had done his research before any of this even started and had diligently set to providing Remus with water and food and a warm bath, on occasion, and touches and soft words and if anything, the whole thing had seemed to come almost more naturally to Sirius than whatever preceded and necessitated it. It had begun to taper off, towards the end of their time in Berlin, with Remus claiming he needed to leave early to make it to one appointment or other, or that he was tired and wanted to go home to sleep, and Sirius had been left feeling rather bereft and at a loss when he didn’t have Remus’s aftercare to focus on. Not that Remus ever needed much, physically speaking: their scenes have never been overly intense in a practical sense, neither of them being much for pain, but Sirius still felt that what they did demanded some form of accommodation afterwards, and felt increasingly incomplete when he wasn't able to provide it. It had abated further when they moved to London, Remus simply washing himself quickly in the bathroom and slipping out the door, and now appears to have stopped entirely. Sirius spends a furtive afternoon hunkered in his office one day in July, looking up such incriminating things as _“Do all submissives need aftercare?”_ which leaves him scarlet-faced and none the wiser, and he resigns himself to suffering that floundering, barren feeling upon Remus’s departure from there on out.

It takes him a long time to realise that if Remus does need tending to after a night with him, then he's probably just getting that care elsewhere now.

***

Walburga passes in October. How fitting, a dark part of Sirius thinks as he stands beside his brother at the funeral, that she should go the night before Halloween, just in time to slip away through the veil and join the other crones and banshees and grim, joyless creatures of the netherworld. He pours himself a double measure of vodka when he gets back to the flat and spends the rest of the afternoon alone, feeling cold and adrift.

"It's Friday," he says dumbly, when he answers the knock on the door just before seven and finds Remus standing out in the foyer. He's holding a plastic bag that smells of cooking oil and spices; there's black paint crusting under his fingernails.

"I know," Remus nods. "But I was at the studio anyway, and I thought I would just bring some food to you."

Sirius blinks at him, unmoving.

"Are you alright?" Remus asks quietly, and then Sirius is shaking his head and feeling his face twist into something ugly and morose, and an hour later finds them sitting side-by-side on the sofa in the living room, a warm hand on back of Sirius's neck as he pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes and sees stars.

"I didn't even like her," he mutters, his voice thick and stuffy, and cringes at how he sounds every inch a stroppy eighteen-year-old again.

"I know," Remus says plainly, which startles a laugh from Sirius.

He sniffs, and turns his head to look across at Remus, elbows still propped on his knees. "Am I a horrible son?"

"I don't think so."

Sirius nods.

"I think she was probably a horrible mother, though," Remus adds, and Sirius laughs again, scrubbing roughly at his face and gazing absently across the room to the framed photograph on the console table; the four of them at a merger dinner three years ago, when Walburga had backhanded Regulus for acting up and then fallen asleep at their table, red wine and ash down the front of her dress.

"She was," he mutters bitterly, then huffs out a long, slow breath. "But she was my mum."

Remus clears the take-out containers away as Sirius showers, and midnight finds Sirius kneeling on the rug in the living room, leaning up to take Remus between his lips. They haven't done this since Berlin: Remus had asked him not to, after a couple of months, and Sirius had assumed it was on account of some anxiety about not getting hard straightaway, and he hadn't pushed it. He finds he needs it tonight, though. "Can I taste you?" he asks breathlessly, reverently, and Remus nods and leans his head back against the sofa cushions, eyes falling shut as Sirius swallows him down. He reaches blindly for Remus's hand as he feels him swell against his tongue, and brings it to rest in his hair, still damp from the shower, and marvels somewhere that it took his own mother dying for them to get Remus finally sitting on the settee instead of on the floor.

"Better?" Remus whispers later, when Sirius rests his head on his thigh and nuzzles into the warm skin there, tongue tacky and bitter against the roof of his mouth. He nods, and finds sanctuary in the way Remus's hand still rests in his hair, and fancies he could feel the whorls of Remus's fingerprints against his scalp if only Remus would stay there long enough.

Work is a misery after that. Orion reaches new heights of tyranny unknown even to his sons, and everyone in the firm suffers for it. Their contract with Fleamont's company expires a week into November and Orion - out of spite or grief or anger - doesn't renew it, which causes hell for James and makes their sporadic evenings at the pub with Peter fraught and tense in a way that turns Sirius's stomach. Sirius is sent away to the New York office for eight days after that, and is so stretched that he's forced to go the whole trip without speaking to Remus. It's the longest they've ever been properly apart, and Sirius pays heavily for it when he boards his flight home and finds the ache in chest so acute that he has to lock himself in the First Class bathroom until they're over Iceland, head in his hands, something hot and sharp thrashing agonisingly against his rib cage. He almost sobs in relief when he pushes open the door to his flat and finds Remus kneeling on the floor of the hallway, head bowed, and he pulls him up and lays him out on the bed and spends a night worshipping every part of him. It's something like the entirety of the last few years in miniature; tentative to start, a moment's hesitation at the renewed unknown after too many nights apart and then, like a flood, the most natural instinct pulling them together as Remus moans loudly into the sheets and Sirius pushes roughly inside him as if it's what they were both designed for. Midnight comes and goes, and Remus hasn't left yet, so Sirius pulls his hips up and buries his face against him and mouths at him there until Remus is hard again and floating and muttering incoherently in German.

"Tell me what you want," Sirius whispers wildly into the darkness, and feels Remus tense against him. That's not how this works; that's not how any of this works, but then Remus is asking just as recklessly for Sirius's fingers, and then more, and then his whole fist, and Sirius feels his entire world contract to a pinpoint; the feeling of Remus seizing around him as he comes weakly against the pillows beneath his hips, and the hot, aching pull of him when Sirius dares to move.

"Are you alright?" he says moments later when they're laid out on the damp sheets, Remus still on his front, eyes closed and breath so heavy it ruffles the loose strands of Sirius's hair on the mattress next to him. Remus nods, and Sirius watches him in awe, and reaches out as if to trace the lines of him with a finger hovering imperceptibly over his heated skin. He leaves him only for a moment, to get a warm flannel and a glass of water and two painkillers to ward off the inevitable ache, and sets to wiping away the stickiness from between Remus's legs. The skin there is red; blooms of crimson spreading out across his thighs, Sirius's come smeared across a canvas like oil paint mixed with the tacky residue of too much lube.

"I have to go," Remus says quietly into the sheets. Sirius pauses.

"No, you don't."

 _Just stay,_ he pleads silently. _Stay, and let me take care of you._

_Take care of me._

_Stay._

He doesn't. He pushes himself up from the bed, and doesn't look at Sirius as he carefully pulls on his clothes out in the hallway, and Sirius doesn't know what he's feeling when he sees Remus grimace and wince when he tugs his jeans back up and bends to lace up his boots.

"Why won't you just fucking stay?"

It's out before he can stop it. It should sound harsh; authoritative and commanding, and maybe if it did then Remus wouldn't be looking at him like that because that would actually be better, really. That would suit them. Sirius could simply demand it of him; demand that he stays, and undresses again, and goes and lays back out on the bed so that Sirius may use him as Sirius pleases because that's what this was always supposed to be. That was what Remus _wanted,_ what he'd asked for that first day in the bar in Berlin, and maybe doing that now would fix all this and kill off the tension and ambiguity that's been hovering around them since they moved here. But he can't, and it doesn't sound like that at all. It's not a command, or an order. It's not a warning or a threat. It's just sad, and desperate, and Sirius hates himself for it.

Remus stands, and stares down the hallway at him, and the look on his face tells Sirius all he needs to know. He's broken something irreparable.

"Because it would mean something different to you than it would to me."

There it is. The breath leaves Sirius in an agonising, brutal rush, and he feels like he's been punched in the gut. He stares as Remus picks his backpack up from the floor and slings it over his shoulder, canvas stained with green and black and grey, and then he's walking out of the flat and _limping_ as he does and Sirius feels sick, and just watches him leave. 

And then he's gone.

***

The New York office makes a call the next morning asking for further help on Sirius's project, and Sirius all but sprints to the gate at Heathrow in his desperation to get out of the city. Regulus must sense that something's wrong, because he offers to join him, and Sirius waves him off absently and doesn't think on it until he's flying over Dublin and finds he's unable to shake Remus's words from the night before, running round infinitely in his head and refusing to dissipate. He could've used the distraction of his brother being here, really, and when he lands he sends a quick text off to Regulus telling him he's welcome to fly out and lend him a hand if he wants. He sends a second text to Remus; a perfunctory, administrative thing telling him that he's away for the foreseeable and will contact him when he's back, and then he stuffs his phone into the depths of his briefcase and asks a yellow taxi to take him to the nearest bar.

New York is a comfort for the next few days. Sirius doesn't know the city well, and the unfamiliarity of it all is enough that he can almost convince himself that he's someone else; someone who doesn't know London, or the heaviness of the past year, or the way Remus feels inside against the pads of his fingers. He loses himself to the work and to late nights and vodka shots with Regulus, and by the end of the week feels so disconnected from himself that he stops feeling guilty about declining calls from James and leaving endless messages unopened in his inbox. There aren't any from Remus, so it's no great hardship to simply shut his phone off over the weekend, and he doesn't think about him at all until it's three in the morning and he's in the back of a cab with Regulus and he can't breathe.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Regulus slurs, leaning over to try push Sirius's head between his legs as if he's worried he might pass out. The cab driver warns them there's a steep cleaning fee if anyone's thinking of throwing up, and Regulus snaps at him to just get them back to their hotel without a commentary and then he's dragging Sirius across the lobby and ignoring the worried glances of the night clerk.

He dumps him on the bed in their shared suite, and Sirius blinks up at the ceiling as Regulus loosens his shoe for him and tugs it off unceremoniously.

"I think I love him," he says quietly, miserably, his tongue feeling thick and heavy in his mouth. His lips are numb.

"Who do you love?" Regulus mutters, picking at the laces of Sirius's other shoe.

"Remus."

He sees a flash of pale skin and a glint from a delicate golden ring in a freckled nose, and feels the corners of his mouth turn downwards as he lifts a hand to clumsily cover his eyes, as if that might dispel the aching pictures. There's a moment's silence, and then the mattress is dipping as Regulus lays down next to him.

"Berlin?"

Sirius nods, and sniffs. He can feel Regulus watching him.

"I thought you weren't seeing him?"

"I'm not," he chokes out, and _God_ , but he wouldn't let anyone but his brother see this. Not even James; not even through school, when Orion had been driving him insane and Walburga had been leaving bruises up and down his arms. Only Regulus. He wipes roughly at his nose and his hand comes away disgusting and wet. 

"So what are you doing?"

If it weren't a few hours before sunrise, and they weren't in a suite in New York, and if Sirius hadn't had that last measure of tequila, then he wouldn't say anything. He'd shrug and wave it off, and tell Regulus they were friends, or Remus was his ex, or something. But they are here, and he's so drunk he can barely feel his face, and none of it matters anymore anyway because Remus is gone and their mum is dead and Regulus is waiting and none of it _matters._

So he tells him. He tells him about Berlin, and about Remus's profile, and how they'd come to their arrangement in a noisy bar one night and how wonderful and perfect it had been to begin with. He tells him about that first summer and how Remus always had flecks of paint on him when he came round, and how Sirius had been so happy, even if he couldn't tell anyone and didn't understand it. And then he tells him about London; about how Remus had quietened after he'd followed him there, and grown distant, and now spends all his time at art shows that Sirius isn't allowed to come to, and seeing other men, and about what he said to Sirius on their last night together, and how he'd just gone, and left Sirius alone in his flat to worry and to fret and to miss him horribly.

"And now he hates me," he finishes sadly, the tequila still making his tongue clumsy and slow.

Regulus is quiet. They lay there together, side-by-side on the bed, both blinking dazedly up at the ceiling fan in the dim light of the pre-dawn. Sirius's blood is still peaked enough that he doesn't find any room or reason to be embarrassed by his confessions; he will, come morning, but he has enough drink in him to keep it at bay for now. And then, after minutes or days, Regulus rolls over and props himself up on his elbows to look down at Sirius.

"He doesn't hate you," he says flatly, and Sirius frowns at him. "You're an idiot."

They both pass out soon after that, Regulus still wearing his shoes and Sirius wondering what his brother could possibly mean by any of that, but too far away to ask him. There's a wake-up call at noon from Sirius's secretary who tells them they're going to miss their flight if they don't rally and get up straightaway, and they're halfway back to London before Regulus snaps at him across the aisle to sort himself out and talk to Remus when they land.

"I'm not sitting through another night like last night," he hisses, tossing back two painkillers and glowering at Sirius over the pages of the in-flight magazine. “Stop moping and bloody talk to him."


	2. Chapter 2

"Is that Remus?"

Sirius's eyes snap up from his glass, and follow James's gaze across the gallery to a table on the other side of the bar. His stomach turns. They haven't spoken since before New York: he'd ached to call him, and Regulus had threatened violence against his person if he didn't, but once the alcohol from his time away with his brother had left his system he'd found himself paralysed - with nerves, or regret, or embarrassment, or all three - and it's been almost a week since they landed and he still hasn't spoken to Remus. He hasn't even let him know he's back in the country.

He tears his gaze away from where Remus is leaning across a low table towards a tall man with greying hair and a leather jacket, and takes a bitter, bracing gulp of his drink.

"Yep," he mutters, feeling hollow. James frowns at him.

"You two finished?"

"Probably," Sirius says tightly, and has to breathe past the perceptible tremor in his voice. He takes another swig from his glass for good measure, and feels if anything even more unsteady. He won't look again, but he's still acutely aware of Remus's presence across the room; it's like a distant fire, burning so ardently that Sirius can feel it's wall of heat against his skin, blistering and bright. He grips his drink, and the ice at the bottom of the glass does little to soothe him.

"Huh," James murmurs, gazing past Sirius to Remus and the other man with the greying hair. "Well," he says distastefully, raising his eyebrows. "Good luck to him, I suppose."

James moves the two of them on to a different bar after that, tugging Sirius diligently out of the back door of the pub so they don't have to pass Remus's table, and Sirius spends the next hour desperately trying to convince himself that he's fine and that he's having a nice time and that he doesn't need to go home immediately and scream into a pillow. He can still feel the pull of Remus, from his table down the street. He aches everywhere, and by the time he heaves himself out of the taxi and up the steps into his building, he's not entirely sure he's not actually getting ill, because it's ludicrous to believe that he could feel so physically lousy on Remus's account alone.

The next week passes in a dull, grey drag of contracts and board meetings and Regulus calling him to ask if he's figured it out yet, and Sirius isn't even sure what that means so he hangs up on him and goes back to his paperwork. Orion visits him one lunchtime - which is extraordinarily rare, and for a horrible moment Sirius panics that someone else has died - but it's only to tell him that he needs him to go back to Berlin for the weekend, and Sirius spends a miserable forty-eight hours traipsing around Potsdamer Platz and trying desperately not to think of a flat, six U-Bahn stops west, where Remus had been his and everything had been perfect.

It's a little after nine on a Tuesday night when Sirius takes off his glasses and pushes his paperwork aside onto the sofa cushions, screwing his eyes shut and pinching at the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the headache that's been brewing since he got on his plane home at Brandenburg International that morning. He yawns, and groans when his accompanying stretch upsets the pile of folders next to him onto the floor, where they land with a clatter that's followed by a loud, harried hammering on the front door.

He'll marvel, later, at how sure he'd been in that moment that it would be Regulus he'd find standing out in the foyer. Regulus, with a fraught look and a briefcase of papers and a story about some deal or other gone wrong and needing Sirius's help to put it right before Orion got wind of it. He'll wonder, despairing at himself, how he could have failed so entirely to even consider that it might be Remus on the other side of the door, and not with anger or condemnation or a demand to know where Sirius has been for the past few weeks but rather with a whimper of relief when Sirius answers his frantic knocking, and a torn jumper, and a nose that's dripping blood onto Sirius's carpet.

 _"Jesus,"_ Sirius whispers. He feels something inside himself twist horribly; Remus chokes out a question he can't decipher, and then Sirius is bundling him into the apartment and getting blood on his white shirt and bolting the door behind them.

"I'm sorry," Remus says, breathless as he holds a hand to his nose and shakes his head in apology. "I'm sorry."

When Sirius was nine, or maybe ten, his nanny had taken him and Regulus on the train to Brighton. Their parents hadn't known; or rather, they knew she'd taken them out of London for the day, but she'd promised they'd take the driver. Regulus had begged and begged to be able to ride the train, and she'd finally acquiesced and made them swear on their favourite things that they'd never speak a word. They'd walked the beach for hours, and Regulus had found a huge whelk shell that he'd charged over and held to Sirius's ear so that Sirius might hear the ocean; the ebb and flow of some static, ambient noise rushing through the hollow and drowning out everything else. That's all he hears now. Remus is saying something - wiping at his face and grimacing and pleading with him in English or German, he can't tell - but all Sirius hears is the roaring of some distant tide as he blinks at the blood now clotting around Remus's nose, and pooling at the corner of his mouth. The hallway smells like copper.

"Please," Remus sobs, breaking through the hum, and then time leaps back to speed as Sirius flicks on the overhead lights and steps forward to take Remus's face gently between his hands, tilting upwards.

"You're alright," he says, wiping carefully at Remus's upper lip with his shirt sleeve and studying the angle of his nose. It doesn't look broken, and he sends a silent prayer to his dear departed mother for delivering enough backhands to the two of them that he knows how to tell the difference now between a nose that is broken and a nose that will merely bruise. "Where else are you hurt?"

Remus shakes his head, still cradled between Sirius's palms. "It's just my face," he sniffs, and then winces and groans, and Sirius leads him down the corridor to the bathroom and deposits him on the closed seat of the toilet.

"What happened?" he says, peculiarly short of breath as he rifles through the cabinet under the sink. He unearths a pack of cotton pads, and bundles up a few of them to press gently to Remus's nose, coaxing Remus to hold them there whilst he wets a flannel under the warm tap.

"It was just some guy," Remus says quietly, and Sirius freezes. Again, on the back foot; he'd assumed a bar fight, or a scuffle outside a kebab shop that a patrolling officer had broken up, because that was a safe enough explanation and unlikely to cause any sort of lasting trauma and it fit, sort of. There’s always, perhaps ironically, been a grain of inherent contempt for order and authority in Remus that Sirius suspects is a result of a misspent youth, years passed smoking and drinking in parks and bus stops before he was old enough to do either, and it wouldn't be the first time that he'd got himself involved in something that would get him barred from whatever club, or given a warning by a pub landlord. But that's not what this is, and Sirius feels the water from the tap turn cold as he looks across the counter at Remus.

"What do you mean _'some guy'_?"

"Just a man," Remus murmurs, taking the flannel from Sirius's unprotesting hands and peering at himself in the mirror as he attempts to wipe some of the flaked, now-russet blood from his chin. "I went home with him and shouldn't have done."

Sirius's stomach lurches. He watches Remus in the mirror, heart pounding, and then steels himself to cast his eyes over the rest of him; the way he's holding himself, the tear at the shoulder seam of his jumper. "Remus," he says quietly, and tastes copper on his tongue. "What happened?"

Their eyes meet in the reflection, and Remus shakes his head emphatically and takes the cotton pads away from his nose so that Sirius might see all of him. "Nothing like that," he says firmly, and Sirius feels something in him seize and diminish. "It wasn't like that."

"What was it like, then?”

Remus blinks at him for a long moment, and then seems to sag against the counter, as if an adrenaline rush suddenly leaves him. He shakes his head, and wets the flannel again under the tap.

"He was just a dick," he mutters, dabbing at the crusted skin around his nose. Neither of them move. Sirius watches him in the mirror still, and Remus doesn't look back at him, and finally the water runs clear when Remus rinses the washcloth and Sirius feels his heart break in two as something shifts further in Remus, who bows his head and screws his eyes shut, clutching at the side of the counter. "I couldn't-" he chokes, then stops, taking a deep inhale through his mouth. "I couldn't get hard," he whispers. "And it made him very angry."

Sirius is moving to him then. He reaches for him, clenching his jaw so hard it'll ache tomorrow and pulling Remus firmly into his arms, clutching at him and holding him and tucking his mussed-up, tangled curls beneath his chin. He doesn't know what he's the most livid about: the fact that he's been hurt, or a man not understanding that Remus's physiology is part of what him his wondrous, perfect whole. Or maybe it's the smear of red he can see in the mirror on the side of Remus's neck, and how he knows it's not paint this time.

Remus lets him hold him for an age. He's bundled into Sirius's shirt, all sniffles and gulps of air that turn quiet and calm the longer they stand there, and when he does eventually make to pull away Sirius doesn't let him go far. He takes him to the bedroom, and gets him a change of clothes from the wardrobe, and tosses both their stained shirts in the direction of the laundry room to deal with later. There's talk, from Sirius, of calling the police, but Remus begs and pleads and shakes his head and tells him he doesn't want to, and Sirius unwillingly relents when Remus murmurs that he's embarrassed by the whole thing and just wants to forget all about it.

"He wouldn't have done anything else," Remus insists. "He was just drunk, and horrible."

It does little to calm the squall inside Sirius, but he does drop it then, and installs Remus on the sofa in the living room whilst he goes and makes them cups of tea with sugar and wraps ice in a tea towel. He comes back to find Remus fumbling awkwardly with the delicate gold ring in his nose, clearly bothering him, and Sirius coaxes him to rest his head back against the cushion as he carefully unhinges the piercing, mindful of the swelling around it, and places it on the side table. They don't talk much after that, but Remus does tuck himself into the side of Sirius, and takes a painkiller without protest, and clutches at his mug of tea as he quietly asks Sirius if he can sleep here and Sirius grips the edge of the sofa cushion and nods stiffly, and doesn't know whether to feel overjoyed that he's Remus's safe place now or hate the fact that this is what it took for Remus to want to spend the night with him.

He's gone when Sirius wakes late the next morning. Or rather, he isn't: he's still there, in the flat, wearing yesterday's stained clothes and hovering in the kitchen, looking all out of place for never having seen the apartment in this light before. But he's not there like he was last night. He doesn't nestle into Sirius's chest when Sirius pads through the hall to meet him, and he doesn't speak when Sirius hands him a coffee across the breakfast counter, and he doesn't meet his gaze when Sirius leads him to the window to inspect his nose in the daylight. He's itchy and unsettled again, the way he gets when Sirius asks him to undress but doesn't fuck him, and Sirius panics that maybe he should've offered Remus one of the spare rooms last night and not assumed that he'd want to share a bed. But then he remembers a hand in his under the covers, and waking up in the early hours to a forehead pressed to his upper back, curls tickling the nape of his neck, and he doesn't think it's that. So it's just what it was before: that Remus doesn't want Sirius to read into any of this, and he was just a safe place to hide out last night, and that this couldn't actually change anything between them.

It's less than a week before the call comes, and Sirius can't honestly say he wasn't expecting it. He hasn't seen Remus since the morning at his flat, insisting that they take a break from their usual scenes but that Remus could, and should, come round regardless if he felt he wanted to, or just needed somewhere safe to stay. He hadn't, and Sirius had been left feeling no less bereft for not letting himself believe that Remus would show up, and then on Thursday night he's at his desk in his study and his phone rings, and it's Remus.

"Hey," Sirius says softly, tossing his glasses on top of his papers and rubbing tiredly at his eyes. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," comes Remus's quiet reply, and Sirius wishes he were here so he could check on him, and make sure the swelling in his nose has gone down and hold ice against the bruise.

"How's your week been?" he asks instead, and tries to ignore the churning in his stomach that tells him Remus isn't calling simply for a catch up. That's never been something they do, really, unless it's bookended by a clarification on timings for that evening's session and instructions on where Sirius wants to find Remus when he gets home from work.

"It was okay," says Remus, and Sirius nods, and says nothing, and lets himself hang perpetually in the moment before Remus tells him and everything changes.

"I'm going to go back to Cologne."

"Yeah," says Sirius, far too quickly, because it's better than staying silent, because then he might succumb to the lump in his throat and the humming of some faraway currents and the way his breathing's gone all funny, he thinks, and makes the tips of his fingers prickle unpleasantly. "That'll be good."

"Yeah, I think I just... need a break," Remus says quietly, and Sirius desperately tries not to fill in the unspoken _'from you'_. Remus helps him, and adds instead: "From London."

It's a kindness, but Sirius hears his tacit request: _Don't call me._

"That'll be good," he murmurs again, forcing a smile as if that might somehow translate down the phone line. "Staying with your family?"

"Yes."

"Good," Sirius nods, swallowing hard. He meets his own reflection in the study window and holds his gaze; a pale, miserable ghost of himself lingering out in the darkness and the rain. It’s fitting. "You alright getting to the airport?"

"Yes, I'll get the train. Thank you."

"How long do you think you'll be gone?"

He catches himself a moment too late, and despairs at the desperate, pathetic tone in his voice. His reflection seems to rebuke him from the window: how entirely unfair of him to still be trying to exert any notion of control over this, all things considered.

_Let him go._

"Well," Remus hedges, and Sirius covers his eyes and presses down furiously, seeing fireworks in the dark. "I'm not sure. I... I really don't know."

"No, of course," says Sirius, forcibly mustering another smile and trying for a recovery. "You should just... yeah, just go and have a break. Enjoy it."

There's a short, painful silence. Sirius hears Remus sniff.

"Can I call you? When I'm back?"

It's so quiet Sirius feels he ought to whisper in return. "Yes," he says, without hesitation, and doesn't know how to paint the prospect of that phone call on his horizon. It's either golden and bright, or an impassable, final terminus beyond which Sirius can't see anything at all. "Yes, you can call me."

He isn't sure when Remus leaves. He stops himself short of looking up departures to Cologne from the London airports, wondering which Remus might be on, and thinks absently that he might feel some sort of astral shift when he does finally get on the plane. It's senseless, of course; they've been apart innumerable times before, for weeks at a time, and the world didn't stop turning then, so there's no reason to expect any great disturbance now. The sun still rises, late as it does in December, and Sirius still spends too many hours at the office, and he still comes back to his apartment long after the sky has darkened and any sensible person is tucked up in bed, asleep. But now the apartment is empty: a hollow, pointless thing with no Remus kneeling on the floor of the hallway or making them both tea in the kitchen or dozing peacefully under the sheets in Sirius's room. Not that he ever really did that here, Sirius thinks morosely. Christmas creeps around, unwelcome and inconvenient, and Sirius resigns himself to a thoroughly miserable weekend at Grimmauld Place with Regulus and an embittered, furious Orion; their first Christmas without Walburga, and Sirius can't decide if it's worse or better for it. There's less shouting, at least.

He doesn't text Remus on Christmas Day. It's the first year he's gone without, and he sits up until after midnight with Regulus instead, traitorous phone stowed safely in his suitcase upstairs until Boxing Day comes and he allows himself a sigh of relief, or accomplishment, or something. He hears nothing from him at New Year, and spends the night with Regulus at some crap bar in Soho, trying not to think about how twelve months ago to the minute he was inside Remus and knew, even then, that this was probably always going to happen. January slips by in a grey, inconsequential blur of work and late nights and hangovers, and on a Tuesday evening the week before Valentine's Day James takes him out - to a pub, of all places - to tell him that he needs to stop wallowing and get his shit together.

"You're drinking too much," James says, knocking back a swig of his pint. Sirius scowls at him.

"That's rich," he mutters. "Coming from you."

"When was the last time you went a day without a drink?" James asks, and Sirius doesn't have a comeback for that. 

He does try, from then on: he clears the bottles from his kitchen counters and stows them away back in the cabinet in the dining room, and allows himself a single glass of wine with dinner every other night, and finds an unexpected catharsis in letting the numbness he's grown accustomed to ebb away and leave room for a raw, exquisite pain whenever he thinks about his empty bed and the fact that none of his towels have paint on them anymore. It's cleansing, somehow, and by April he still misses Remus more than he's ever missed anything in his life but it's with a new clarity and focus that he finds he actually welcomes; it's not such a darkness anymore, all complicated shadows marring and obscuring his every waking moment but rather a sharp, clear point on the horizon that he'll deal with when it calls to him, and either die or be reborn in the process.

James proposes to Lily on the first day of spring, and Sirius claps James on the back and tells him it's about bloody time, and for the first time in too long feels something that he suspects might be the beginnings of a small spark of genuine, unbridled happiness, or something like it. He allows himself the indulgence of succumbing to it, and it's a warm, balmy evening at the end of May that finds him stretched out on a picnic blanket in the garden of James and Lily's townhouse, sipping on a lemonade and laughing as Pete dives across their makeshift goalposts to avoid the football Regulus has just sent sailing purposefully towards his head.

"Poor sportsmanship, brother," Sirius admonishes, grinning when Regulus rounds on him and scowls. He's always been the sorest of losers. "Daddy would be so proud."

"Oh, piss off," mutters Regulus, pouting as he throws himself down on the blanket next to Sirius. James brings him a beer and a conciliatory ruffle of his hair, which Regulus bats away furiously, and then they're all gathering round and eyeing the trays of food James and Lily carry over from the barbecue on the patio.

"Are you allowed to eat this, Lily?" Pete asks, chewing on a bit of halloumi.

"Technically, yes," she says, lowering herself carefully to the ground with James's help and resting a hand on her swollen belly. "But at the moment all I can think about is red meat."

"Like a little tiger," says James, and Lily pats his hand affectionately and reaches for the tray of ribs.

"Yes dear," she says, and then they all tuck in, stacking plates with burgers and sausages and pasta, great heirloom tomatoes plucked from the vine in James's sunroom and a tart, sour relish that Regulus brought as his contribution. They never used to do this, really; they've always met socially, outside of work, but it tended to be scheduled and diarised drinks in the city, an hour at most, and never all five of them together. It's something around the upcoming wedding and the impending arrival of the baby that's shifted things, Sirius thinks, and over the past few weeks he's found himself thoroughly enjoying the newfound slower pace for the group. Even work is affording him and Regulus some respite away from their desks at the moment; the Nairobi project is finally complete, and Orion's all taken up with some business in St. Petersburg, and they've found that it's not impossible to slip away from the office before dusk during his absence - a discovery they've vigorously committed to making the most of until his return.

"Is that yours, Sirius?"

Sirius frowns at James, and pats his pockets searchingly at the sound of a familiar ringtone.

"It's here," says Pete, digging the ringing phone out from under a cushion and tossing it across the salads to Sirius. He glances at the screen, and feels something colossal shift beneath him.

"Sirius?" James prompts, and they're all watching him now. "You going to get that?"

He doesn't really remember answering. He doesn't remember standing, or excusing himself, or walking back towards the open doors of the conservatory but suddenly he's alone and sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, the air cool after the heat of the garden, and the phone is still ringing cheerily in his hand.

"Remus."

"Hi," comes a quiet voice down the line, and Sirius feels every part of himself reorient and slot back into an old, familiar form, after so many months at sea. It's like a prayer; his own personal siren-song calling out to him to tempt him from the doldrums where he's been safely treading water since the winter, and he knows with a strange, unexpected acceptance that it's either deliverance or ruin being brought to him tonight; there won't be an in-between. 

He grins despite himself.

"Hi," he says, his smile evident in his voice, and he hears Remus chuckle.

"Hi."

"How are you?"

"I'm good," Remus says, and Sirius lets himself imagine for a moment that he's right next to him here in the empty kitchen; his voice is so clear, he could be, and Sirius searches for any sense of whether Remus might be geographically closer to him now than he has been in months. There's nothing, though; Remus could be anywhere in the world and still feel like he's right there beside him. Maybe that's the whole point.

"How's Cologne?" he asks.

"It was good," says Remus, and Sirius might hold his breath, and then: "I'm back in London now."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I got back a few days ago."

Sirius wonders, again, whether he should've felt that; whether the city should've shifted somehow, the streets grown brighter with the knowledge that Remus was back amongst them, with his art and his chaos and his paints all dotted across his skin. He wonders if he should've been drawn to a point, somewhere, pulled by magnetism to wherever Remus has been staying, seeking him out by some innate and elemental instinct. But then, perhaps it's better that he didn't. It's clearer this way, and when Remus asks him moments later if he'll come to him, and meet him outside his studio, Sirius feels uncommonly in command of his own intentions when he agrees. 

Regulus throws him a knowing look when he heads back out into the garden and makes his apologies, James following him into the house to help him gather his things together and locate his shoes and check that he's alright, and that he knows what he's doing.

"I'm fine," Sirius says, smiling, and finding that he really does mean it. "I'll be fine."

Remus's studio is on the ground floor of an old, whitewashed building down a quiet street in Hoxton; a disused warehouse or mill that's been converted into workspace and galleries. Sirius has seen it before. He's been in the car on the rare occasion Remus has acquiesced to a lift from his driver, usually because it was raining or because he had huge armfuls of folders to carry, and he'd thought to himself every time how much the building suited Remus. It's unshowy; modest and unassuming, unpolished in the most appealing way, and with a singular beauty in its every detail. The way the paint flakes around the heavy steel door, a patina of rust coating the handle in umber and bronze; the late evening sun as it refracts off the towering floor-to-ceiling windows, cords of burnished gold light rushing up the timeworn glass and picking out every ripple and notch. And Remus, standing outside, all freckles and nose ring and a smile that feels like home.

"Hi," Remus tells him, for the third time that night, and Sirius smiles and nods and aches to reach out and touch him.

"Hi," he says instead. He looks well; he's filled out a little, the angles of him under his t-shirt softened somehow after five months of good home cooking and quiet and peace. His nose is as straight as ever - so it really wasn't broken, Sirius notes - and there's a glow to his skin as if he hasn't spent the whole winter in a studio, and has seen some sun, and it's lovely.

"Thank you for coming."

"Thanks for calling."

He'd had nightmares, after Remus had left - notably, he realises now, before James told him to stop drinking quite so much - where he'd imagined that Remus would never come back. Or rather, he'd come back to the city, but he'd never come back to Sirius. He'd return to London and carry on his life here, and the days and weeks and months would slip by and he'd never call, because he simply wouldn’t need to, and then Sirius would see him one day in a park or a coffee shop or outside his apartment and Remus would stare right through him, and frown politely in confusion when Sirius called out to him. _"I'm sorry,"_ Remus would say, shaking his head and shrugging. _"I think you've got the wrong person."_ Sirius always woke panting and cold and clutching at the dead air in the bed beside him, and Regulus would see the dark circles under his eyes the next morning and tell him to get a grip, because of course Remus would call him when he was back. _"You're an idiot,"_ Regulus would say to him, as he always did, and he'd walk away muttering to himself and Sirius would be left feeling unsettled and small and wishing he had his brother's blind faith in Remus, despite not knowing him at all.

"I was always going to call," says Remus quietly, and Sirius nods, and tells him he knows, and isn't sure how truthful he's being.

"What are we doing here?" he asks in deflection, looking up at the building.

"I need to show you something."

Sirius swallows, and can't help but feel like he's heading towards some great, conclusive destiny or end point as he follows Remus inside. He lets himself be led down a long side corridor, passing studios and storage rooms and kitchens until they're at the back of the building and Remus is treading down three stone steps and pausing outside an unremarkable steel door, a battered padlock hanging from a sliding bolt flecked with layers of errant spots of paint.

Remus hesitates, turning a small key absently in his palm as he gazes at the door, and then back to Sirius.

"It's okay if... if you're not okay with this," he murmurs, his voice uncharacteristically tentative. "But I need to show you now."

The lock clicks open, and the bolt is slid across, and the first thing Sirius thinks when he steps into the room is that he's never truly seen colour before tonight. The studio is a riot; golden evening sunlight streaming through the vast windows at the back of the building and picking out a spectrum on every surface, every canvas and frame and easel decorated with pigments and hues that take Sirius's breath away. There are workbenches and paint-splattered tables everywhere, scattered with months and years of drawings and papers and sketches, countless pots and palettes with armies of brushes stacked beside them. Even the walls are painted; great murals daubed across the brickwork, saffron and jade and coral and aquamarine. And red; so much red.

"I'm sorry that I never told you."

Sirius turns to Remus and sees him hovering awkwardly in the doorway, and he frowns in confusion, and it's not until he looks back out at the room and lets his vision acclimatise that he understands. 

It's him. It's all him; everywhere. The cut of his jaw, his hair, his own eyes staring back at him from their canvasses. There's the shape of him, his forearms and his hands and his whole, unobscured self made out in garnet and ruby against rainbow-fractal backgrounds. Studies of him span the loose-leaf papers strewn across the long workbench to his left, a taut sheet of cotton stretched across a wooden frame with the beginnings of a sketch of a body he recognises as his own, wrapped around another that can only be Remus, and when he turns back to the door he finds him standing there, frozen in place, looking utterly terrified.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, and Sirius just stares at him, wide-eyed. "I'm so sorry."

Sirius looks back to the paintings in stunned silence. He feels leagues above it all; looking down on the studio and himself and all the depictions of him in oils and pencil and watercolours, feeling strangely disconnected from the whole thing as he finds his mind hundreds of miles and four years away, in a bar just off the Kurfürstendamm, sitting opposite a boy with pale skin and a nose ring. 

“How long?” he hears himself ask, tight and measured. 

“Since Berlin,” comes Remus’s cautious reply. “Almost from the beginning.”

Sirius nods distractedly. There’s a canvas set against the back wall, something in black and scarlet, and he wanders, numbly, across the floor to take a closer look. It’s devastating; all aching brushstrokes and great daubs of red against a bleak, midnight background. He sees the two of them on the rug in his living room, the New Year before last, and thinks he understands. 

“It’s why I never invited you to my shows,” Remus says quietly, still waiting out in the doorway. “Because then you would know.”

Sirius keeps his back to him as he speaks. “Know what?” he prompts, his voice rough and coarse in his throat, and the painting in front of him blurs and eddies when Remus finally answers. 

“That I wanted to be with you,” he whispers. “That I always wanted to be with you. And it just got... more, and harder, and... more complicated.” 

He breaks off, and Sirius hears him sniff and wipe roughly at his face. 

“Complicated?” he says tightly. 

“It got to a point where I wasn't sure what was real,” he explains, tentative and unsteady and breaking Sirius’s heart, “and what was... just part of it all. And I was scared to find out if it was real, I think. And I was scared to find out if it wasn’t,” he adds, with a small, pained laugh. “I think I was very confused, for a long time.”

“That’s why you left,” Sirius says, still sounding distant and vague to his own ears. There’s a paper pinned to the bottom of the easel in front of him; a crude sketch of the two of them together. Sirius isn’t sure if he wants to frame it or set it on fire. 

“I needed to be apart from you, properly. So I could make sure... because it's been a very intense few years.”

It would turn out, months later, to be the thing that eventually brought James, ever the logician, round on the whole idea of Remus and prompt him to stiffly suggest to Sirius that he bring him as a guest to the wedding. How eminently sensible, James would say, to remove oneself from the situation entirely and wait it out to see what stuck. Sirius would come to understand, too, eventually; he’s never had any doubt in his own mind that what he felt - what he’s always felt, from the very start - was real, and unforced, and simple, but for Remus it could never have been so straightforward; how does one tell the difference, James asks of him, on a warm night in the late summer when he’s back from his honeymoon and Sirius is telling him about the new apartment he’s been looking at with Remus that day, between something genuine and something learned? How does one separate the orders and the commands and the expectations from what they’re really feeling, and filter through the act to get to the grit of what’s underneath it all?

For now, though, all Sirius can see is the time lost; the years wasted not talking and not seeing and obscuring everything with appointments and rules and arbitrary stipulations that, in hindsight, must’ve done little for either of them compared with what they could have been enjoying from the beginning. 

"I do want to be with you," says Remus, and at that Sirius finally, daringly turns, and looks across the room at him, and sees everything he’s ever wanted hovering there in the doorway with pleading eyes and paint on his t-shirt. “More than anything. And I know that this is a lot,” he adds contritely, glancing around his studio. “And I would understand, if...” he trails off, and shrugs, and looks across at Sirius as if he’s afraid he’s going to disappear into the canvas behind him, lost entirely to the dyes and the forms and Remus’s frenzied brushstrokes. 

The sea of portraits feels like a vast ocean as Sirius makes his way across it, the floor between him and Remus spanning decades and an age before he’s finally in front of him and he’s taking hold of him and kissing him squarely on the lips for the first time in almost four years. 

It's the first time since that first summer, when Remus had asked him not to and told him that he wanted to date other men and sleep with other men and Sirius thinks he gets it, now. He thinks of the bottles upon bottles in the cabinet in his dining room, and the nights lost to oblivion followed by mornings he never saw, and he gets it. There’s a part of him, somewhere, that expected Remus to be pliant and supple under his touch now; a learned assumption from years of Remus willingly bending to his command and measuring his every step by how Sirius praised or admonished him for it. But it’s nothing like that, and Sirius isn’t sure it ever was; not even in those first months in Berlin before this stopped and everything got messy and complicated. Remus _burns_ against his lips; he’s all fire and electricity, a split-second of wonder before he’s pushing back against Sirius and matching him with every movement, tongues and teeth and paint-stained hands fisting in the front of Sirius’s shirt. 

They stumble back into the studio, and Sirius cradles Remus’s face and thinks he’ll never stop kissing him, never need to take another breath and never mind if it kills him, and then his back hits something solid and he looks to see a great, framed canvas leaning against a workbench; two bodies stretched out and touching, parted legs and fingers and a look of exultation etched in rose and carmine. 

“Why red?” Sirius mutters breathlessly as Remus crushes their lips together again, and feels Remus smile against him. 

“Because it’s you,” he says. And Sirius has no idea what that means. 

***

It’s dark by the time they crash into Sirius’s apartment, tripping down the hallway and not bothering with light switches as they kiss and laugh and fall into Sirius’s bedroom. It’s all new, and bright, and Sirius marvels at the feeling of Remus’s t-shirt beneath his fingers and the way he’s allowed to grin against his lips and how Remus _looks_ at him when they undress and collapse onto the mattress. It’s like nothing he’s ever known before; it’s intoxicating. 

“I’m nervous,” Remus whispers, holding himself over Sirius on his elbows and smiling down at him in the lamplight. 

Sirius swallows. “Me too,” he says, nodding, and then Remus is pressing against him and rocking gently, and they’re lost to quiet moans and utterances and the way Remus is gazing right at him the whole time. Sirius runs a hand reverently down his side, coming to rest on the back of his thigh as he hitches Remus’s leg slightly and pushes up against him more insistently, sticky and hot and making Sirius see stars. 

They move together, all pressure and warm skin, and Sirius knows he could die happy with the feeling of Remus’s tongue pressing searchingly past his lips with every gentle thrust upwards, every muffled gasp and whisper. He turns them, after a while, and coaxes Remus down onto his back as he settles on top of him and mouths his way down his body, leaving trails of hot kisses along his collarbone, a hardened nipple pinched gently between his teeth, before he’s kneeling between his parted legs and taking him in his mouth. 

He can feel himself being watched. Remus’s eyes burn into him, holding him as he swallows him down and tongues at the soft length of him, a hand coming up to rub teasingly along the inside of his thigh. He pulls off, emboldened by the sounds Remus is making, and groans as he laps at Remus’s balls, slipping them between his lips one by one and sucking at them hungrily, and it’s messy and lewd and perfect. 

Until it isn’t, because then Remus is tapping distractedly at Sirius’s shoulder and he looks up to see him laying back on the pillow, gazing up at the ceiling. 

“Remus?” he asks gently, entirely out of breath and half-blinded by the throbbing hardness between his own legs. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus murmurs, and glances down to give Sirius a contrite smile as he shakes his head. “I’m so nervous.”

Sirius has never, in all their time together, heard Remus apologise for this. He wants to murder the man who taught him that he should. 

“ _Hey_ ,” he whispers, crawling back up Remus’s body and gazing down at him, a careful hand in his hair. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Remus nods, and Sirius isn’t sure if he believes it, but then there’s a warm hand reaching searchingly between his own legs and he gasps as Remus’s fingers close around him. 

“I want to do this,” Remus murmurs against his lips, finding a slow, gentle pull that makes Sirius’s arms go weak beneath him. “I just need some help.”

Sirius manages a smile despite himself. “Tell me what you need,” he whispers breathlessly, and then Remus is releasing him and turning beneath him, settling out on his front and pushing his hips back wantonly. He cranes his head to look over his shoulder at Sirius, eyes pleading, and Sirius needs no further encouragement. 

“You want my mouth?” he murmurs teasingly, and nearly comes on the spot at the eager moan he gets in response, and then he’s sinking back down to tuck a pillow beneath Remus’s hips, settling between his thighs and using his hands to spread him, coaxing his legs further apart. He wonders, as he lets saliva pool in his mouth and uses his tongue to push it inside Remus, how they haven’t just been doing this the whole time. Remus may have set other boundaries, back in Berlin, but there were never any rules against this, other than the ones that Sirius had subconsciously constructed to match the rigid, arbitrary framework of the part he was supposed to be playing. He’d asked Remus to do it to him on countless occasions and revelled in the incomparable feeling of being breached by his tongue, but God only knows why he so seldom dared to do it himself. It’s paradise. 

His jaw aches by the time Remus pushes himself up on his elbows and looks back at him, and he pulls away to watch Remus grind lazily into the mattress. “Touch me,” Remus begs, and Sirius holds his gaze as he slips a hand underneath him, sliding it between his body and the sheets and moaning when he finds him hard and leaking. “See?” Remus says, pushing himself down into Sirius’s palm. 

Sirius swears under his breath and feels himself stiffen further, impossibly, and then Remus is looking down between them fervently and asking if they need to use a condom. 

“No,” Sirius pants, settling back on top of him and mouthing at the juncture between Remus's neck and his freckled shoulder as he carefully works a finger inside him. “I haven’t been with anyone else.”

Remus nods, and pushes back, and moans when Sirius slips in past the knuckle, and then it’s a blur of more fingers and open-mouthed kisses and Remus reaching over to fumble in the nightstand for a bottle of lube. And then Sirius slides inside, all at once, and he’s home. 

It’s a slow, languid start. Sirius gives them both a long moment to adjust, panting in tandem and, on Sirius’s part, swallowing past a great and wholly expected rush of feeling that comes with being buried deep inside Remus again and only grows, beautifully, when Remus moans weakly and pushes back against him and asks him, in a broken voice, to move. So he does; he rocks into him carefully, luxuriating in the drag of Remus’s skin around him as he slips out and pushes back inside, and then Remus groans insistently and clenches around him, and Sirius sees stars. 

“More?” he pants, and Remus nods desperately into the pillow, and then Sirius is covering him entirely, chest pressed against the damp skin of Remus’s back. He reaches to fit a palm comfortably around the base of Remus’s neck, coaxing him with a thumb on his jaw to turn his head to the side and meet Sirius in a sloppy, open kiss, before he’s pounding into him in earnest, swallowing down every gasp and whimper that slips from Remus’s mouth. “Like this?” he says, breathless, and Remus nods and groans and kisses him eagerly, whispering some unintelligible encouragement against his lips. 

It’s a wonder he lasts more than a few moments. He feels himself approaching a crest, and backs off as best he can, reaching down with his free hand to find Remus still hard and wet and grinding himself into the mattress. He rubs at him firmly, insistently, and feels a muscle in Remus’s neck tighten as he pushes deep inside him and whispers desperately against his ear. 

_“Say my name.”_

The answering moan that spills from Remus’s lips is the most divine thing Sirius can remember. He gasps at Sirius’s words, and Sirius feels him seize and stiffen and spill over his hand, painting the sheets below him. 

_“Sirius.”_

It’s a long, drawn out thing; syllables that go straight to the core of him as he loses himself in the cadence of it, and the way Remus’s accent curls around the vowels, lending them glorious new peaks and valleys that Sirius knows he’ll spend the rest of his life exploring. It’s all it takes for him to follow, seconds later, burying his face into the crook of Remus’s neck as he groans and pulses inside him, filling him and coating him until they’re both trembling and panting, their laboured breaths and Remus’s weak, lingering moans the only sounds left in the hot, lamp-lit room. Sirius thinks dazedly of how he stepped inside Remus’s studio a few hours ago, and felt as if he’d crossed some great threshold between the old and the new; seeing colours where before there’d only been a pale, timid imitation of them. This feels like that, all over again. 

They lay there together for an age, Sirius half on top of Remus, skin sticking together with sweat and lube until Sirius makes to pull out carefully, and Remus stops him with a shake of his head and a tired hand on his thigh. 

“Not yet,” he says, eyes closed as he weakly pushes his hips back in his endeavour to keep Sirius’s softening length inside him. “Just another minute.”

Sirius laughs softly, and seats himself against Remus, tucking his face back into the crook of his neck and feeling damp curls ticking his forehead. 

“Say my name again,” he whispers. 

***

“I’m sorry that I never knew,” Remus says quietly, tracing the line of Sirius’s lower lip with a finger as they lay together on the bed hours later, showered and fed and sated completely. “We’ve wasted a lot of time.”

“You didn’t know because I didn’t let you know,” Sirius murmurs, his eyes closed. He's willing himself, desperately, not to get lost in the past four years and what could’ve been; it’s too risky, and it’s not where they’re going. He's not entirely sure how successful he's being. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I shouldn’t have left.”

“Remus,” Sirius sighs, revelling in the way Remus is still running a curious, searching finger lightly over his skin. “I understand. You needed some distance. It was a good thing.”

“I don’t mean that,” says Remus, and Sirius opens his eyes. “I mean all the times before. I always left you.”

Sirius watches him across the pillow.

“I didn’t want to let myself think I could have more of you,” he goes on, and Sirius hates the way the corner of his mouth seems to pull down as he speaks. “So it was always just safer to leave.”

He's not sure who reaches for whom, but their hands find one another under the covers at that, and their fingers twine easily together. 

“You’re here now.”

Remus hums, and keeps lazily drawing over the lines of Sirius's face with a finger. He drifts along the planes of his cheekbones, climbing the contour of his nose and up over his brow, charting delicate, masterful strokes as if Sirius were clay and stone and he a great sculptor of antiquity. “I’ve painted you a thousand times,” he murmurs in wonder, slipping past Sirius’s hairline, tracking the loose strands and following them down to where they curl around his ears. “I’ve never even come close.”

“When did you first paint me?” Sirius asks quietly, closing his eyes again as he reaches for a distraction; anything to temper the aching adoration with which Remus is gazing at him. It takes his breath away. 

“About six weeks after I met you.”

“When you asked me to stop kissing you,” Sirius says, as yet another piece of the riddle solves itself and dissipates. He feels Remus nod against the pillow. 

“I think I knew by then that I would end up wanting a lot more," Remus admits. "So it was easier to just... stop. And distract myself."

Sirius is unsure whether he should feel vindication or some sort of quiet shame about his own moment of revelation; wanting more after a month and a half and ploughing on regardless is one thing, and from Remus's careful tone now and his sad, beseeching apologies back at the studio, he's shouldering his own guilt borne of years spent hidden away, lies of omission weighing heavy on him even now everything is out in the open. A month and a half is one thing; less than a day feels like a whole other tier of deception entirely. His dishonesty predates Remus's by weeks. By the time the spring had ended in Berlin and Remus had come to him asking his permission to see other men, Sirius knows his own desires had already been registered, processed, and locked safely away in a vault somewhere deep inside him, where they would stay until London, when Remus had had the terrifying, wonderful nerve to follow him across Europe and demand to remain a part of his life. Half a season spent ruling over him whilst at the same time falling painfully, irrevocably in love with him; it might've been poetic had it not turned out to be so entirely avoidable.

“Six weeks isn’t very long," he murmurs noncommittally, without opening his eyes.

“How long did it take you?” asks Remus.

He'll tell him, one day; how it had been mere hours, after he'd walked out of that bar on the Kurfürstendamm, and Sirius had already known that the arrangement the two of them had just come to would never - could never - be enough for him. One day, he'll tell him the truth, and wait for his absolution. If Remus's deception can be measured in paintings and the canvasses stacked four-deep against the walls of his studio, perhaps Sirius's is in the late nights and rows of empty bottles he's quite sure would reach from here all the way back to Berlin, and he prays silently that the penance for his duplicity has already been paid.

"Not long," he says softly for now, his hand still clinging to Remus's under the covers. "Not long at all."


End file.
